I’m not sure how long it has been. I’m not sure where I am, but it is time I tell this story before he catches up to me.I’m not sure how long it has been. I’m not sure where I am, but it is time I tell this story before he catches up to me.
This experience of mine all started after I woke up after being drunk, with a terrible headache. When I got up, everything sort of felt off, and I decided to just fall back asleep and wait till later.
When I woke the second time, something was definitely unsettling, but I wasn’t sure what. Everything was as it should be, except, it was a tiny bit of color, like if you soak something in water for long enough and it becomes distorted. The hangover was over, and this time I was sure something was off.
I left my house, and everything was the same, but when I looked up, the sun was missing. There was still light, but the light was just there, no source to be seen.
The concept of an alternate world has been seen many times, from Stranger Things to Coraline, but nothing has ever been close to describing what this place is like. The Upside-Down is clearly dangerous from the get go, while in Coraline, it is friendly and warm, but here, here is just plain unsettling.
I walked down my street, and decided to just walk somewhere nearby to talk with someone, to try and see if anyone else knew something about what happened here, or if this even was the same world at all. Eventually, I did come to a nearby Starbucks, and I entered.
No one there seemed to notice me, which had been normal on the streets, but I sat at a table, and tried to talk with someone, but no one would look at me, until a woman walked in, and unlike the others, her color was like that from before. Immediately she noticed me, and I frantically walked over and asked what was going on.
“People like you and I don’t belong here, Mr. Evans. He is coming for me soon, you have some time left,” she said, and without another word, left the shop and walked away into the distance.
I didn’t bother following, I felt I would not get any more answers. Who was ‘he’, and what did she mean about him coming for us? At least she had confirmed my fear, that I was somewhere different. I had never met her before, but she knew my name, and I wondered if she was even like me at all.
Afterwards I went back home, and I waited. After a few hours I got the feeling I was getting watched, so I went to shut my blinds, and I glanced quickly out the window. After closing the blinds I looked out again, I swore I saw a cloaked figure standing outside, but it was gone. I guess I had seen ‘him’.
I ran out my back door and hopped the fence, running as fast as I could. I winded through many streets, again, nobody noticing me, and I stopped, out of breath. Far away from me, walking slowly down a distant street, towards me. The sky dimmed, and the world seemed to fade before my eyes, and I started sprinting again running in the opposite direction of the figure.
I realized I was heading to the graveyard, and I knew that that was one place I definitely did not want to go. I eventually reached an empty building, it used to be a store, and I locked the doors, and blocked it with a shelf, and hid the only place available the bathroom.
If you did not know, abandoned bathrooms are very dark and very creepy, especially when the color seemed to be fading from the world. I sat there for what seemed like hours, flinching every time I heard a noise, and eventually I decided it would be better to chance the streets, so I went over to the door and grabbed the handle. It was locked. Over by the end of the bathroom stood a door, a door that wasn’t there before.
And for just a minute, I wondered if it led back to the real world, so I walked over to it, and surprisingly, it was unlocked, and opening it, was disappointed, but quickly after, shocked, as it led out into the graveyard. The world was had only one color left, the color green, and even that started to fade to grey before my eyes.
I walked out into the graveyard, and wandered a bit, wondering when he would come for me. I saw things there I have never seen before, and many more people like me, ones who were like me, and I sort of understood now. Eventually I found someone I had been looking for, my mother, but she was one of the gray ones. I followed her up the hill and she laid a bundle of flowers on a grave. When she moved, I could finally see what was written on the stone: Here Lies Jonathan Arthur Evans, May He Rest In Peace.